This video teaches you the two methods for removing water and casing solids from stick butter. Clarified butter has thousands of uses in the world of cooking and is especially good for quick sautéing of foods on the top of the stove.
Thanks for helping out a recreational at-home cook all the way from 2008. I learned a lot and I think you've helped me enhance my meals for myself and my guests.
I love how this describes the process, it may just name what we do at home for decades, but professionally detailing every single reaction before, during, and after... I loved the effort and passion you invested in your video. I will be back for more
So impressed. Thank you. I've been doing this incorrectly all along. I haven't used the cheesecloth/boil method but, using the scoop the froth method, I have neglected to get the stuff at the bottom. Silly me. And that's what I find on the bottom of my fully refrigerated clarified butter. I always wondered what that was., Now I know and will use the "glass separation " method shown. Many thanks form a home chef in Toronto.
Thanks, clarifying does raise the burning point drastically! I use for cooking mushrooms, potatoes, omelets, fried eggs or steak in a cast iron pan. You get all the taste of the butter without the browned burnt taste when using regular butter. It's so easy to do, I use the low heat version, as for me heating butter to boiling just isn't the correct way to do it!
Thanks for this video! My mom had always done the melted version, and then would let it cool at room temp until it became more solid. She would then use the handle end of the wooden spoon and poke a few holes to the bottom of the pot, and drain the liquid off, leaving the butterfat to use in baking. I would be interested in your thoughts on this. p.s. enjoy many of your videos!
Thank you. I'm glad you're finding some benefits from these videos !! As you described it, your mom's method sounds very inefficient to me but then again, I wasn't there !! LOL
God blessed you Chef 😊 well explained. Can I use it in baking to make it more stable? like to my bread and cakes? I will put it inside the ref. to make it solid again before adding it to my bake goods
In many cases, yes you can use clarified in some of your cakes etc. There are a number of formulas that I've encountered over the years that required clarified butter to be folded into the final cake "batter" just prior to pouring the batter into the baking vessel. That was how the clarified was carefully incorporated into the batter.
thanks chef! great video. One question, when you say "boil" do you mean you put the sticks of butter in a pan with water and boil it down, or are you just putting the sticks of butter in the pan and melting it at high heat? Thanks.
when possible I always start with unsalted for all things and when clarifying you'll lose most of your salt if not all due to the separations of impurities. so I would recommend always using unsalted and then season tt
Great video - the best clarified butter video on youtube! BTW 3:50 When you are pouring the remainder of the oil and watery/milk solids bottom layer from the saucepan into the glass, does it matter how you pour it in? I tried this for the first time today and just slopped it all in rather than decanting in as much oil and as little water as possible. There was a whitish layer at the bottom but 1-2" of oily/watery bubbles above with a thin layer of pure oil on top. I tried heating the mixture up slightly and stirring it hoping that the bubbles would disintegrate and the layers separate better but it didn't really work. It's hard to see on the video how clear the oil is in the glass on the right on top of the milk/water layer. Any input would be greatly appreciated! :-) Thanks.
Fabian Dee It does not matter how you pour it in, only how long you may allow for it to effectively separate so that you can remove the fat. Warming it can help but stirring will not. let it sit for an hour if necessary. Thanks for your interest.
It’s so funny! When you watch the RU-vid home cooks do this, it looks so delicate. But when you see a pro do it, there’s nothing delicate about it. So simple. I’m doing this tomorrow.
I'm not sure if you're asking a question or making a declaration? If you're asking whether or not you should use clarified butter instead of whole butter to make puff paste or croissants then the answer is NO, you shouldn't.
The way with the glass seems like a great way to do big batches, say, 10-30 pounds at a time. Do a few small batches and pour it in a tall glass to measure on average how deep the fat is from the bottom. Then go do a monster batch in a big pot. Pour off what you can and keep that as your "better butter" then fine-tune the bottom part.
I've done big baches a number of ways. One of my favorites was to melt the whole bulk butter (68 pound cube(s)) In a stationary riveted to the floor stock pot that had a drain on the bottom. It was so easy to open the drain and let the casing/water solids flow into the garbage drain and be left with only the butter fat. Pardon the expression but if you could clarify your comment i could get your point as to why you made your comment in the first place?? It seems a little fuzzy......sorry
Many years ago the Frugal Gourmet used a special pitcher made to pour off the water and soilds. It was tallish with a long spout that was connected to the bottom of the container. He put melted butter in the pitcher, let the water and solids settle to the bottom, then slowly poured them out of the oil. I haven't been able to find anything that does that.
Yes Chef, what you said was true, but for the home cooks couldn't a gravy strainer or separator be used? I would think it would serve a double duty purpose.
I was looking for the function of clarified butter- can you tell me the origin of using butter in seafood? I learned some time ago it's purpose in dipping is to remove the sand from the seafood, is that correct? Thank you
The two most common functions are that it's used as a vehicle to transfer heat from cookware to food and as an all around oil/fat for thousands of other uses. I would "suspect" that the origin of using butter with seafood is centuries old and its use probably predates any written cookbooks. Sand from seafood?? I don't have a clue about that. BTW - why would you even want to know that??
The way I make this is I first melt the butter on low heat in one saucepan, until the solids sink below the fat. At this point, there is almost no mixing between the fat and the solids. Before it starts to boil I pour the fat into another saucepan and put it on the stove. Setting the heat slightly higher than water's boiling point I then keep the fat on the stove until it's stopped bubbling and is completely still, to make sure all the water is gone. Then the clarified butter is ready for storage and should be completely free from both water and milk solids. This method should give you the cleanest clarified butter and requires the least amount of work, and also requires no straining. Chef, do you know if there's some problem with this method that I'm missing? Because I've never seen anyone else make clarified butter this way, yet it seems to work well as far as I can tell.
Without knowing how much butter you're talking about: My first thoughts are that your method takes twice as long, burns more fuel and dirties a second saucepan. Also your method requires either a stovepipe saucepan or more than one pound of butter in order to effectively skim the fat out of the initial melted butter saucepan. Other than that your method seems functional but a little clumsy - compared to one step of boiling and straining. On the other hand I think you should use the method that you're the most comfortable with.
You can remove ALL the water after Clarifying it by chilling it over night, poke a hole down thru it, and drain out the remaining water. Boiling it gives it an off taste. Just melt, skim, chill, hole, and drain. That isnt butter fat you mentioned, it is milk solids. Butter *IS* the butter fat. Use Cheesecloth 90+mesh.
I think I referred to them as casing solids but your comment does not fall on deaf ears. Also, the version I presented here takes 10 minutes to complete. Not 10 hours. It's also worth noting that these versions I presented here have been codified and gone unchallenged by millions and millions of cooks for more than 300 years. My version also can be adapted, converted and applied - when making 30 pound cases of butter (clarified) as well as standard 68 pound commercial blocks of butter being converted to clarified.. Also the "off taste" you refer to is actually sought out by the Indians when preparing ghee, which is a "more cooked" version of what I presented here. There's a half a billion cooks there that think we don't cook our clarified butter enough. Of course, all of this is rooted in the matters of personal taste and professional efficiency. I look forward to being notified when you're presenting your own educational cooking platform on RU-vid or wherever - so that I can learn more from you. Thank you for you interest and insights.
Ghee aka clarified butter has a higher smoke point than regular butter... so im confused by you stating its not gonna last longer in heat. Just by the process.
is this also called ghee? some say that its the same and that you can fry with it because of the heat highpoint. you seem to say the opposite. I'm trying to find a healthy high point heat cooking oil that inexpensive. making ghee so far seems the way to go. but now I'm confused
Technically, the only difference between ghee and clarified butter is that ghee is actually cooked to a slightly more tinted color by the Indians before it's used in hundreds of Indian preparations. Clarified butter does not have a heat high point that's considered to be high. Goose & duck fats and olive oil are all higher as well as some less common boutique oils such as avocado, hazelnut and grape seed. I'd recommend a mixed or pomace olive oil as an inexpensive one for light sauteing or small pan frying projects. For deep frying I'd recommend peanut oil, canola oil and regular vegetable frying oil from the supermarket.
It is not quite as simple as he makes it sound. The smoke point of butter for example can range anywhere from around 300F to 485F, depending on the purity (such as high purity ghee). The fat in butter itself has a high smoke and stability point, but just like many types of olive oil it is the impurities that are the problem. The main purpose of filtering it is to get the milk solids etc out, which have a very low smoke point.
You're incorrect about something. IT'S SIMPLER THAN I MAKE IT SOUND. Your "molecular cooking nerd" approach is what makes it sound un-simple. If you want to teach us how to cook then provide the links for your video demonstrations and lectures so that we can become as enlightened as you. And yes, that means that if you want to run with the big dogs you have to get off the couch and come out here and make a showing of your expertise and intellectual cooking prowess - for all of us to see and to critique. Until you get to that point, please stay on the couch and write a thesis on smoke points for yourself. Thank you
Hi! I'm trying to descifrate the point. I speak spanish and it's a little bit hard to get the point. I have been seen manny vieos abount ghee, and my first question is... ¿why, if is from India, we never see an India person telling the true recipe? the second... ¿Is it as wonderfull? then... ¿why some people said there is difference between clarified and ghee... yellow and brown... and, besides. that french recipe "BEURRE NOISETTE" 0_O
From a practical point of view, clarified butter and ghee are ALMOST the same thing. Ghee is cooked a little longer but I've worked with some Indians that think they're the same. I guess it depends on how technical you want to get and who you talk to. Any food preparation that has a 2-4000 year old history is going to have some disputes associated with it lol.
Mucho importante. Wiki says that with the casein solids skimmed off and the milk solids (Lactose among them) strained out, most people with lactose intolerance/milk allergy can eat the butterfat with no problemo.
Thank you for sharing. Actually, clarified butter has a slightly higher heat tolerance than ghee. Ghee has already been slightly browned which diminishes the amount of time that it can effectively transfer heat from a metal pan to the food.
OK - I'm going to clarify the clarified butter question for you LOL. And, if you listen to what I said in the video you'll realize that the words "smoke point" never came out of my mouth:: First off, just because it takes clarified butter longer to catch on fire does not mean that it has any increased durability or performance capabilities over the other oils or fats. In fact, all the smoke point can tell you is how long it might take for an oil or fat to catch on fire. Beyond that, it tells you nothing. The fact is, that clarified butter loses its ability to effectively transfer heat from the metal to the food much faster than olive oil or duck fat does. When and if I anticipate a long high heat saute process the last oil I would normally use would be clarified butter. It doesn't mean that from time to time I might not even mix olive oil and clarified butter together in the same saute pan in order to tap into both flavors a little bit, while simultaneously extending the oil's lifespan in the saute pan. On the other hand, if I was sauteeing something quickly in hot fat for the purpose of browning it quickly, then clarified butter would normally be my first choice. I might even mix some whole butter into the clarified for added flavor because I know I'm not going to be cooking long enough for the butter(s) to break down and become unable to transfer heat effectively. In all cases of using clarified butter for any extended or even slightly extended periods of time on a high flame, the clarified butter will be the first fat or oil to begin slightly boiling the foods that it's supposed to be cooking/sauteing and browning. This is the reason why you don't see or hear about a lot of Chef's or cooks' filling deep fat fryers with clarified butter. Even little tiny tabletop fryers. And no, not because it wouldn't taste good. It simply doesn't last that long and if the fryer was held at 375 degrees all day waiting for someone to order the claried fried food item - the cook would have to switch out the clarified butter every day and possibly even twice a day. Most cooks that fry things in clarified butter do it in small individual pieces of cookware -to order. On the other hand, i could fill up a deep fryer with olive oil or duck fat and use it for a few days and possibly a week. The simple answer is: Olive oil and duck fat lasts longer under high heat than clarified butter does, and yes, clarified butter has the higher smoke point. So what? Instead of me emphasizing that, I used my experience of cooking with these fats to give you the practical progressive usage advice, not the uneducated use of technical facts, which can sometimes be misinterpreted, misunderstood or inappropriately applied to actual cooking methods & formulas. I hope that I've help to clarify my approach and at the same time given you some new practical advice. Thanks for your comment !!
I just melt the butter, don't boil it, pour into a dish and stick in the fridge.... next day I take it out and take the butter out and the water and milk remain in the dish.
Clearly, your comment is incorrect and pathetic. I think you need to clean your glasses and overhaul your disposition. Then take another look at the butter and yourself. Who knows what you might discover??? !!! LOL Keep your comments coming in please!!!!
Nice clean stove and you made such a mess spilling butter all over the place, like you don't care. Cooks like you slowly run down great places to eat. I wonder what you'r kitchen/House looks like.. If I was you'r Boss and I watched this video you would be looking for another job.
Ha ha ha!! You're not the first cook that has fantasized about being my boss. Unfortunately, I think the standard you would have to meet is beyond your grasp at the moment. Maybe one day when you're all grown up you can have a kitchen like the one that i built in this video - and then you can whine and complain all you want about the cooks that work for you, which I don't think would last very long !! LOL. Please keep your "special insight" comments coming. I need all the entertainment I can get !!! LOL LOL.
@@Douglas46461 Whatever he was referring to - he did it in bad taste. People who make off the wall comments like the one that was made here usually get run over in good kitchens because cooks don't put up with flagrant disrespect.
Clarified butter's very overrated. It's o.k. for saute but it tastes inferior to plain butter. It's less complex in flavor... or less buttery tasting because it's missing the rich milky flavor found in plain butter. Don't be a zombie who blindly agrees with the crowd. Lastly, it's too expensive and too much trouble anyways.
You have my partial agreement on some of that. As a matter of fact, I saute with whole butter whenever the cooking requirements allow for it !! Yes, it tastes better.
